The Kids Are OK

Work is different than anticipated. I suppose a Nazi war camp would have been a relief compared to what I anticipated. I realized after hours of orientation upon entering the Multi-Language School Building that I will actually enjoy this job—that I’ll be good at it. It will, I believe, offer fulfillment—truly amazing to have found something like this at age 28. I have a feeling many people go all of their life without feeling gratification from their job. 

Reveille

I start work at DLI tomorrow and I’m feeling strange. What if my Persian isn’t good enough? My past experiences with UCLA and teaching 101/102 at Arizona offer some solace, it’s still a scary thought to be teaching four hours of Persian a day to the military. Only one way to find out. 

Lie of the Tiger

I am still questioning my motives of being in this post-apocalyptic city. Am I here to learn Arabic? I’m not. To have fun? I’m not. To make friends…well, I’ll stop the nihilism there.

There is one Danish girl who is magic. Yet, there is another. A handsome man. My accolades for him run barren. There’s really nothing nice to say about him, but I feel bad glossing over his goodness. He helped me with my Arabic homework, kissed me on a bench in front of the Mediterranean, and took me to a fun nightclub called Prague.

He was prompt in his delivery, but what he is delivering is beyond me. At first I thought it was caprice, but I was wrong. Then I thought it might be sex: wrong again. Now I realize that the only thing I got was confusion and anger. I revel in the latter as it often manifests into stifled emotion.

He lied to me. told me I wasn’t the one for him and it was all a ruse. That he doesn’t find me attractive—I’m still in shock. He called himself an asshole. I disagreed and now I wonder why I didn’t just let him continue thinking it. Why did I consider his feelings? Nobody likes a hero, yet here I am.

So now I study and tan and hang out with the Dane. I have 3 weeks left and I really want to enjoy them. We were supposed to spend my last nine days fucking and having fun, going to Byblos, meeting his mom and her cooking, instead we are in a biergarten/someone’s converted backyard while I’m being told I’m ugly and getting dumped.

I trusted that was wrong. I have to be wiser, where does wisdom come from? Experience? Age? I have both, but no helpful juices pour from these sources. 

Musings

Why the fuck am I in Beirut?

Bugs

I’m nothing if not a pierced fool. It’s Thursday night—Thirsty Fright Night. The undergrads go nuts. In turn, this makes me a little bit nuts. That’s where it starts.

I’ve been really conscious of my age. Suddenly, 27 feels old. I feel the absence of husband, child, career and comfort. The theoretical mini-van of acting my conventional age reeks.

If continuing at this pace, my first child won’t arrive until age 32. When my mom reached 32 I was writing suicide notes in my room. At this rate I’ll be a senior citizen before my kids start writing suicide notes.

As yet there is no plan. There is E*…who gets me. He even gets that he doesn’t always get me. I can’t count on him though. He’s busy. And scared. The commitment scares him—or, more truthfully, my ability to stay committed scares him. He thinks I’m a wanderer. So, either way, neither the proposal nor the intent for marriage exists. Perhaps there is more than this. 

Man-moth

My sister has taken ill. The bells of St. Christopher are ringing to make it an exact 12 pm. I ordered a latte in German and was asked whether I’d like cinnamon or chocolate sprinkles in English.

I’ve miss my friends and life in Cairo. The bells are still ringing. One of my best memories is the night E* and I walked down Hassan Sabry on the other side of 26^th of July and I revealed secrets about myself, which ended up not being secrets at all. I’m convinced that I’m in love with him. then there’s T* back home. What was that Jane Austen quote about mountains vs. men? Insert that here. 

Berlin I

I lack the energy to continue traveling. Fatigue has usurped my wherewithal. Berlin and its people are beautiful. It all makes sense. But I am bored. This may be attributed to my extensive and excessive travels from home—studies in Egypt have led to a sojourn in Deutschland.

I’ve lost the will to be impressed by architectural miracles or sculptural sensation. When I get on a bus, I only wish it that it be headed to my house. My sister, I sense, is not having fun and as her travel companion I sense failure. Ugh, I just want to go home. 

Masks of Zamalek

I find myself drinking water to combat fatigue/illness, yet despite these great quantities of ‘ultimate solvent’ flushing through my system, I grow more sick and tired of Cairo every passing minute.

It isn’t the dirty, crowded or oppressive aspect of the city, nor is it the academic program which busies itself pandering fools and assholes. It’s what I become when I’m here. The socially soaring success of the image I have created carries tiring expectations. I must not only be interesting but also sunny, funny, pretty, intellectually stimulating and—the worst one, an ‘easy-going traveler’.

This is the portrayal of self to which I have submitted and it is haunting. I feel the need to deliver this person, or I am the opposite of all the positive and wonderful characteristics I want to believe I am

These thoughts have usurped my Cairene day. I will take this time to say that it isn’t that I dislike myself, per se, just the energy it takes to be me. I don't want to die, I just don't want to drive.

L&M Blues

15 minutes a day for a proper travel treatise—that's what the great ones say
But, how do I capture in time what I feel on an intangible and spatial level? 
Thus far, Cairo has been a dredging trudge, a dreadful dredge amid a straining stretch. Alliterative descriptions only add sadness to an even more sad day. In short, this place sucks.

Disassociation in travel? Normal

Anxiety during travel? A new religion. 
But the anxiety has blended with boredom in what has become a spiraled mess
The Middle East is boring once the shopping is done and exchange rates are exalted
One is left with a depressed city causing depression 
Lacking warmth (ironically)
While bearing an uneasy resemblance to every other Middle Eastern city 
Plus the ass-grabbers. Can't forget them. They make this place what it is: gross and sexually oppressive, 
But we're going to Giza tomorrow to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx, so...
I'll get my ass-grabbed in somewhere historic. 
The pyramids have to be good for something, right? 

Rooms with Views

After finding some will today, expectations started to burden me…telling me that I should find a way. I chose the modification of my reality, I took it upon me to change everything. I went to the store, bought a ticket to Egypt, scaling three countries on my way. 

For reasons inexplicable, I can’t be in one place for very long, and therefore choose to replicate or ape some young female traveler in a Forester novel, exalting the architecture in obnoxiously exuberant statements, musing upon whether or not (and what a travesty if it were so!) the locals appreciate the color and majesty in the surroundings. 

I’m too hard on Forester. Travel writing should neither be appreciated nor discriminated in a vacuum. It gives context to my own travels. Using home as a comparison to, for example, the frightful disaster that is the Cairo Airport; the hopelessness and panic in explaining a forgotten [in my desk drawer] airline ticket to a Czech Airlines representative who, it seems, was capable of offering me nothing but the icy glaze of her wet, blue eyes. Yes, I live here as The Ugly American (if we’re keeping it literary) and find that my U.S. passport burdens me either in reality or all in my too-well-read-over-educated head. 

Foghorn Leghorn

Currently, roosters are calling—or whatever designation one gives to the rooster’s bellow. I can’t sleep as I have much on my mind: the Iranian boarder I have taken in, find affordable hostel in Prague for imminent trip with sister, register at AUC, pack for Cairo, roommate’s boyfriend is visiting, I smoked too many cigarettes tonight.  

Sleepy Tingles

 I want to move, but

The fear kicks in—of waking him

He obliviously shifts position

And          we’re 

    suddenly

           contorted.

Like a sly ninja

My arm hides under the slumbering boy;

Keeping secrets from his neck.

An arm that has lost all sensation--

Crammed beneath his temple. 

Yet in the process,

We have built our own fleshy mosque.

Yes, I am beneath you,

(Although I prefer being on top)

Entangled—or should I say entingled?—

With relentless pins jabbing in,

Harder at work now,

Piercing deeper and quicker.

The tingles deter sleep,

But they feel like how the stars look;

(Even though my starry night lacks hydrogen, 

helium, 

and a dense cloud

Within its life cycle)

And definitely has a great attractor.

20 April 2000-14 February 2001  

Precious Atom

The girl suffered within the disharmony of opposites:

Fat/thin, pretty/ugly, charming/obnoxious, nice/mean,

Superficiality fist-fucked her soul.

These opposites (meant to attract) subtracted 

from her self-worth. 

Living amid the pinch of friends,

The clench of men,

And the slow self-destruction of cigarettes,

She preferred the consistency of isolation.

Allow me to change voice, and refer  to “she” as me.

For all these things I was, 

“Unworthy of love” was one of them

Its mere idea unleashed a non-self-induced nausea.

Yet it was all I wanted, and was too self-involved to know.

And then there was you and the phone, you and the phone;

Me on my back on the ground of my bedroom,

Still furnished with the pink bed that I picked out in grade school;

Leaving a monochromatic stain on the carpet

From all the blood,

From the wounds,

From people and their words.

I understood from you: a kind gesture of pity.

“He feels sorry for me,” I tell myself

And your words ricocheted my open wounds.

But you wedged the word love

somewhere tangible. In the part of me,

That wanted to be saved.  

You introduced me to myself…(Hello. Pleased to meet me); 

Upon descending my head, I realized that

Love is spreading within every pore, 

And atom and crevasse in my body—

It was the most vital lesson I ever learned;

With a billion filled holes to prove it,

And you to thank.

Brownish Wings to Fly

Sorry I can’t change a moth into a fly for you,

Grow a garden in July for you--

Jump into the sky for you.

Sorry I can’t sing the sweetest song for you, 

Grow my hair real long for you--

Never say anything wrong for you. 

Please don’t judge if I can’t climb the highest tree

Or float like the humming bee. 

Let’s instead focus on the things I did that you can see:

I stabbed a deer

I drank a beer

I swam in muddy water, 

Now that you see the dirt under my nails, 

Please hold me like your daughter. 

But I know you’ll focus on the things undone--

I let you down,

Didn’t earn my crown. 

Perhaps you’ll one day understand my hell,

I hope for things to sweet to tell. 

Mother's milk

Sunny walkway, sunny one
Where'd you put your sunshine smile?
I think you lost it in the shuffle.

Did you know, I think you're perfect?
I don't think you know it though
I used to hate you until a few minutes afo

Difference between fire and a firefly

Sorry I can't change a moth into a fly for you,
Grow a garden in July for you,
Jump into the sky for you

Sorry I can't sing the sweetest song for you, 
Grow my hair real long for you,
Never say anything wrong for you

Please don't cry for me if I can't can't climb the highest tree for you
Or fly with the fastest bee for you

I stabbed a deer and drink a beer,
I even let you touch me.
Then why is it on nights like this
I feel like you have cut me?

Sitting alone in my room 
Cold like a tomb
I know
I've let you down
Because I can't play Princess tonight